@Lerad, I think your argument would be more convincing if you can provide the boost for each racial, not just one.
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Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
For the record, speed isn't always going to be king. It just is in the current (old) system because you don't sacrifice wounding for speed. Everyone could hit the strength cap, and reducing speed was a greater net loss to wounding than reducing precision. The math favored speed.
Speed as a factor isn't inherently bad so long as there's a tradeoff. For example, higher speed should come with lower net wounding in X amount of time. You get more chances for afflictions/poisons, but you do less wounding. Which is doable in the weapon system where you can relate speed bonuses directly with wounding maluses.
It's not so much the same for casters for a number of reasons, and the maluses not being a direct counter for the increased speed (more fire damage never countered faster everything).
With the new system though, it's going to be all about speed again tbh. Build your wounds on the target as fast as possible on the swings, trying to outpace slush curing, then start dumping on those delicious affs. Since we will no longer be building wounds while giving affs, if anything balance speed will be more important to apply pressure for kills.
Edit: Especially since damage will be inconsequential, since health portion balance will never be consumed applying.
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Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
edited November 2015
Depends, can make speed weapons for afflictions and a net loss of wounding (for example: builds wounds slower than they can be healed). Simple enough to adjust a formula to account for that. Could make the speed mod do half wounding, so that it has niche application when going for afflictions.
Keep in mind that speed has not always been king in Lusternia. There was a time when precision was actually valuable, and people weighed wounding versus speed. Max speed didn't score you instant tendons, but higher wounds did. Scaling and what not changed at some point and the meta changed.
Hell, might even make it more dynamic rather than "this is the one weapon you can use to be effective."
In the overhaul arena in its current incarnation (sans gear changes) that's not the case. Be interesting to see what happens with the gear changes, but I doubt it'll be a large departure from what it is now.
In the pre-overhaul system, with respect to weapon stats, precision is king. It is the standard for speeds to be set to 230-240 and the rest dumped into precision. However, pre-overhaul aslaran was the most popular race to play because of its stupid speed bonus. It allowed them to invest even more into precision than most without sacrificing as much speed. Good riddance for old races.
Under this new strange warrior concept we're adopting, it appears to be very affliction based and wounds are overall standardized across the board. I very much doubt damage or bleeding will become a big part of the kill formula unless something changes. Tarkenton is right that speed will be king, just as it would for any affliction-based class.
Well, if we're talking about in the past, then I'm pretty sure Speed-is-King is one of the oldest warrior metastrategies. The foundations of my understanding of (pre-overhaul) warrior strategies was rooted back when I was a newbie, when I learned that speed is king not just because of wps, but also because of the need to be hitting faster than a certain threshold in order to manipulate the opponent's wound curing based on his wound priorities.
But I will admit that might no longer be relevant or valued nowadays. I'll also admit I've not crunched numbers at the efficiency of precision and speed in affecting wounds per second, and perhaps precision does increase wps more efficiently than speed nowadays, so my arguments might not hold as much weight.
Regardless, higher speed does translate to more than just more wounds - Celina is right in saying that if higher speed translates to LESS wounds (not just less efficient increase in wounds, but actually less wounds than if you didn't take speed), then there is a tradeoff where the speed becomes a choice to be made for advantages other than wounds over time - which is what wins fight in old warriors, and most definitely in new warriors too.
For the record, the bonus weapon races will get is minor, the slight incremental gain to speed and damage will not result in a discrepancy that harkens back to Faeling/Aslaran vs any other knight.
When designing the races, certain things were removed, generic balance/eq bonuses was one of them, instead there are several races with situational gains. Some have more impact than others, but with the exception of fink tier 5 none of the offensive bonuses grant a huge increase in speed. The advantage gained should go largely unnoticed in the bigger picture.
Speed under the new system is more advantageous for some builds than others. Granted speed is useful for everyone, but in that train of thought so is damage, bleeding/bruising etc. Players will be able to customise weapons to fit different strategies (Rough example: Mana drain group kill setups will want to stick more bleeding and damage)
This new system has the advantage of offering players more options in customisation, while removing the tedium of spending 15-20 minutes re tempering at a forge. The cost of weapon investment has also come down considerably while keeping artifact boosted weapons under a ceiling where we can balance Knighthood around non artifact weapons and not worry that those who do choose to invest are overpowered.
I thought the new warrior specs allowed some specializations to have Damage as a viable kill method, even though others didn't. At least that was the response I got when I noted that blademasters weren't doing enough damage. Did that never materialize?
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Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
Damage isn't a viable kill method for anyone right now.
Axelord's damage increases as wounds do, and it has a health-based instakill... that's as close as it comes to "damage killing", afaik. I don't think anyone has tested any of the specializations (with full curing, etc.) to know how effective they are/will be, at the moment.
My understanding is Blademaster is (supposed to be) about afflictions, Pureblade is about bleeding, Axelord is is about damage, Bonecrusher is supposed to be about bruising and Cavalier is supposed to be about wounding.
Axelord is the damage warrior spec. Sensitivity with light wounds, slit throat with heavy, sensitivity+extra damage on heavy, damage bonus that scales to wounding kill condition that requires either < 50% health or lots of wounds spread across several body parts. Its pretty obvious that the intent is that you lead with head strike + senso, then switch to chest once you have critical headwounds for sensitivity damage. If they're healing damage, try to build on gut for Execute, otherwise focus on keeping slit throat in place until Behead. I don't know how tendons or amputates are supposed to factor into it.
Pureblade could hypothetically be used as a damage kill spec if you wanted to do that. Its not optimal at all, but your basic tactic would be to alternate OpenChest and SeverPhrenic for as long as you can, trying to prevent as much clotting as possible through haemophilia and vitals pressure. This probably won't actually kill anyone solo, but it seems like it would be very applicable to a group setting where you want to mana kill people.
Axelord's damage increases as wounds do, and it has a health-based instakill... that's as close as it comes to "damage killing", afaik. I don't think anyone has tested any of the specializations (with full curing, etc.) to know how effective they are/will be, at the moment.
So, wouldn't it logically be better to choose speed over damage if you had to choose between the two? You'd stick more wounds that way, getting more damage and more afflictions in the process.
I think speed's going to be best, yeah. I think that's okay, though, because speed is the most interesting of the things 'to be king.' I mean, if damage was king, everyone would max that and whack people. Speed (presumably) means more and faster wounds, which unlocks the affs and special effects that make each specialization unique/interesting.
Unless I missed something, master tattoos would still be armor, but I do not see something indicated slots (like kephera). Would the belt proposed be used for tattoos too?
EDIT:
What is happening with:
- Temp affs (chills, burning, frozen)
- Temp insanity and timewarp
- Throatlock and leglock (and any other focus cure).
- Etc? Are those being left or were they just overlooked? We left a lot of affs, want to make sure that is intended before massively recoding and leaving them in.
Personally, monks get a huge advantage out of tattoos compared to all other tattoo users. Even in the new system, monks get a 2/7 out of tattoo resistances compared to everyone's 1/5. I think it won't be too much of a problem for tattoos to not get armour slots.
That's my personal opinion, of course.
There's also the point that a monk tattooist that goes for offensive (or utility) tattoos then lose that advantage, creating pressure to go with defensive tattoos. I'm open to buffing offensive (or utility) tattoos for monks to make up for their lack of knots, if that's something that's seen as an acceptable compromise, but whether the admin feel the same is a different thing - if anyone has ideas, I certainly don't mind using a report slot to see if the admin are amenable to that suggestion.
@Ieptix, @Roark: One thing I'd like to ask for, however, is for generic robes to NOT have armour at all, until they are enchanted. Some monks, with their tattoos and all, still like to wear robes for modesty's sake. But right now, we can't even wear unenchanted greatrobes, because it will deactivate our tattoo armour. If that can be changed, I'll be very happy. (Or, if that is already changed in the past, do let us know so we can be very happy)
2/7 means you get 3% more resistance than someone else, vs what strength and utility of a knot?
If you have more to gain becoming a kephera, even though their armour is the same level, then you have an issue. If kephera should be given something with knots, so should tattooists, otherwise you are penalizing taking tattoos.
I don't really accept that 3% of anything is going to compensate for versatility.
In the opening post, knots are stated to be 1/6. Masterarmour/Splendours is two slots, so assuming both are knots, that's 2 damage types they can choose to get equal resistance (except capped at 6, while monks are capped at 7) if they run exactly the same tattoos as a monk running defensive tattoos for those two damage types. If a monk is running defensive tattoos for other damage types on top of it, the monk is out ahead. I'm not sure if we can say it's unfair to monks if they don't get knots.
I'm not sure how Kephera will figure into this - I'm sure the admin will think of something. In terms of monks with tattoo armour (and no knots) versus non-monks with whatever armour they have (and knots), monks are still ahead numerically.
If there is any concern, it is that the set up "punishes" monks who don't choose defensive tattoos - where before it was a nice bonus, now it is a case of "you're losing out because you don't get knots", and as I've said, creating a limited effect to boost one or two offensive/utility tattoos to make up for the lack of knots is possibly a good idea - though the admin may or may not see it in that way.
I have to ask why you would make 2 different artifacts for 1 handers vs 2, instead of buying a set of two to put on each weapon, or both on one. It's clearly possible, because that's how the old system worked, so I see this as a pointless disparaging of skillflex.
@Estarra You're the producer and work on this stuff, so I'm inclined to take your word at face value, but I am super curious to know why the inventory item for weapon bonus would be impossible vs attaching to the weapon? We've seen other arbitrary buffs in the past that weren't attached to the weapon (think: I changeling into Orclach, suddenly more PB precision!) Have you considered instead of adding extra slots to the weapons, that the artifacts could be attuned to particular enhancements through a command and then applied to a particular weapon with another command? This would get rid of any problem with disappearing and reappearing slots, if that was one of the big concerns.
My thoughts on the proposed forging mallet so far:
Because of the overall design goal of some of the knight specs, the Mallet of Forging changes from a convenience/gold saving artifact to a must have, at least to forge for certain specs. As a good example, the proposed weapon effects for three slotted masterwork BM swords should basically always be Speed Honed Virulent. As a spec, BM was designed for low bleeding and low damage, so the effects that add to those are unlikely to be desirable. Additionally, the spec lacks blackout/stun modifiers, so the Weighted effect is similarly undesirable. The virulent ability is kind of fluffy, but with the current proposed effects it's likely to be more desirable than the bleed, bruise, damage, damage type effects for PVP.
For specs that are meant to go for damage pressure, ie. Axelord, the damage type effect is probably going to be a must for PVP, especially if all damage types are allowed (asphyxiation?).
In fact, if all damage types are allowed, then you're going to see hunting weapons forged with speed, damage, damagetype (divinus) with regularity. I think that'd be pretty awesome from a bashing perspective... I'd love to do some divinus with my rapiers... but this changes the mallet from an artifact which made tempered items cheaper into an artifact that is an absolute must have for forged goods to be desirable at all.
I don't think any other trade artifact has such a drastic affect on the trade. I was considering if I would pick up forging earlier and, having thought about this proposal, I feel like the trade would be mostly useless if I didn't buy a mallet too. I could get the +2% protection and extra knot slot on the masterarmour, but I'd be a transcendant forger asking other forgers to make my weapons for me...
Allowing the mallet to forge items for half the comm costs (sounds like it'd be hard/impossible to code?) and put effects into slots for cheap or free would put it more in line with other trade artifacts.
TBH the virulent option seems dead useless, if it follows all the normal rules for envenomed strikes but just doesn't require using up a tiny amount of poison. Having it on the mallet doesn't add any value to the item.
The only real draw for the item is the damage changing effect.
I didn't mean to imply that I thought the virulent effect had great value, simply that out of the options available it might be used by blademasters because all the alternatives are even less useful.
Also, with warriors being overhauled, and withered arms/legs moving over to ice cures, we need to think about ways to conserve the platypus and eyelash viper populations.
Related, and more on topic, do we know if the new weapons will able to be tuned to do divinus damage? I was thinking of buying a whip, but if I can get a part-divinus chain I'd prefer to rather invest in runes for permanenting that.
I still think all warrior and monk guilds should get an effect like Paradigmatics' Chaos Aura (which changes 1/6 weapon damage to psychic).
I agree that all damage types would be super awesome, just not that you should need the mallet to do it because all bashing weapons will want it and probably 1/3 of pvp forgings as well. Making the effects for free, and being able to re-do them outside a forge (for 3.5-5s balance each, to discourage flipping your enhancements mid-battle) would make it useful and interesting without being oppressive to the forgers who don't have it.
I love the concept in the slots, but I think for it to be successful there has to be a lot more than 8 total options. There has to be, at the minimum, 6 that each spec would find truly desirable in order to drive rune sales. Now, some specs are certainly going to overlap on some of the effects, but that means probably at least 10 total that are good for pvp in one way or another. It'd be a good idea to have some others for bashing specifically.
Souldrinker - A weapon that has been imbued with the souldrinker effect will steal a portion of the damage it does and channel it into the wielder. Essentially lifesteal. Now, this could be done a variety of ways. A flat %, which would make it easy to balance between one hand and two hands, but may also need a cap so people with lots of crits don't become immune to everything. You could have it heal a % of your total health each time you crit, but would need to be only proccable every so often to keep BM/BC from having an advantage. Mobs only on the critting version, obviously, but even the other is unlikely to make it to PVP because damage killing is unlikely and may want it to be mobs only for balance anyways.
Glimmering - Increase power gained from linking astral nodes. BM/BC can get 1 power (half-link) for each rune and the heftier weapons could get a whole extra link of power to account for the difference in slotting flexibility.
Crushing - Can be used to smash walls, for a balance.
PrettyLights - Allows the wielder to change the colour of attacks made using the weapon. Fluffy? Yes. I would still love it.
Seeking - Increase crit %.
Blurry - Small % chance to bypass parry. On the fence about this one. You aren't going to win a fight just attacking their parry spot if you get through 1/20 times, but if it makes you think you got them to move their parry and they didn't it could be more of a hindrance than a help. Maybe if there is an extra line so you know that's what happened.
I love the idea that was brought up for ignoring shielding, but this should probably be against mobs only.
Comments
Edit: Especially since damage will be inconsequential, since health portion balance will never be consumed applying.
When designing the races, certain things were removed, generic balance/eq bonuses was one of them, instead there are several races with situational gains. Some have more impact than others, but with the exception of fink tier 5 none of the offensive bonuses grant a huge increase in speed. The advantage gained should go largely unnoticed in the bigger picture.
Speed under the new system is more advantageous for some builds than others. Granted speed is useful for everyone, but in that train of thought so is damage, bleeding/bruising etc. Players will be able to customise weapons to fit different strategies (Rough example: Mana drain group kill setups will want to stick more bleeding and damage)
This new system has the advantage of offering players more options in customisation, while removing the tedium of spending 15-20 minutes re tempering at a forge. The cost of weapon investment has also come down considerably while keeping artifact boosted weapons under a ceiling where we can balance Knighthood around non artifact weapons and not worry that those who do choose to invest are overpowered.
Did that never materialize?
Axelord is the damage warrior spec. Sensitivity with light wounds, slit throat with heavy, sensitivity+extra damage on heavy, damage bonus that scales to wounding kill condition that requires either < 50% health or lots of wounds spread across several body parts. Its pretty obvious that the intent is that you lead with head strike + senso, then switch to chest once you have critical headwounds for sensitivity damage. If they're healing damage, try to build on gut for Execute, otherwise focus on keeping slit throat in place until Behead. I don't know how tendons or amputates are supposed to factor into it.
Pureblade could hypothetically be used as a damage kill spec if you wanted to do that. Its not optimal at all, but your basic tactic would be to alternate OpenChest and SeverPhrenic for as long as you can, trying to prevent as much clotting as possible through haemophilia and vitals pressure. This probably won't actually kill anyone solo, but it seems like it would be very applicable to a group setting where you want to mana kill people.
Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."
@Estarra You're the producer and work on this stuff, so I'm inclined to take your word at face value, but I am super curious to know why the inventory item for weapon bonus would be impossible vs attaching to the weapon? We've seen other arbitrary buffs in the past that weren't attached to the weapon (think: I changeling into Orclach, suddenly more PB precision!) Have you considered instead of adding extra slots to the weapons, that the artifacts could be attuned to particular enhancements through a command and then applied to a particular weapon with another command? This would get rid of any problem with disappearing and reappearing slots, if that was one of the big concerns.
Because of the overall design goal of some of the knight specs, the Mallet of Forging changes from a convenience/gold saving artifact to a must have, at least to forge for certain specs. As a good example, the proposed weapon effects for three slotted masterwork BM swords should basically always be Speed Honed Virulent. As a spec, BM was designed for low bleeding and low damage, so the effects that add to those are unlikely to be desirable. Additionally, the spec lacks blackout/stun modifiers, so the Weighted effect is similarly undesirable. The virulent ability is kind of fluffy, but with the current proposed effects it's likely to be more desirable than the bleed, bruise, damage, damage type effects for PVP.
For specs that are meant to go for damage pressure, ie. Axelord, the damage type effect is probably going to be a must for PVP, especially if all damage types are allowed (asphyxiation?).
In fact, if all damage types are allowed, then you're going to see hunting weapons forged with speed, damage, damagetype (divinus) with regularity. I think that'd be pretty awesome from a bashing perspective... I'd love to do some divinus with my rapiers... but this changes the mallet from an artifact which made tempered items cheaper into an artifact that is an absolute must have for forged goods to be desirable at all.
I don't think any other trade artifact has such a drastic affect on the trade. I was considering if I would pick up forging earlier and, having thought about this proposal, I feel like the trade would be mostly useless if I didn't buy a mallet too. I could get the +2% protection and extra knot slot on the masterarmour, but I'd be a transcendant forger asking other forgers to make my weapons for me...
Allowing the mallet to forge items for half the comm costs (sounds like it'd be hard/impossible to code?) and put effects into slots for cheap or free would put it more in line with other trade artifacts.
Also, with warriors being overhauled, and withered arms/legs moving over to ice cures, we need to think about ways to conserve the platypus and eyelash viper populations.
(Psst, Lirangsha is weak to excorable)
Related, and more on topic, do we know if the new weapons will able to be tuned to do divinus damage? I was thinking of buying a whip, but if I can get a part-divinus chain I'd prefer to rather invest in runes for permanenting that.
I still think all warrior and monk guilds should get an effect like Paradigmatics' Chaos Aura (which changes 1/6 weapon damage to psychic).
I love the concept in the slots, but I think for it to be successful there has to be a lot more than 8 total options. There has to be, at the minimum, 6 that each spec would find truly desirable in order to drive rune sales. Now, some specs are certainly going to overlap on some of the effects, but that means probably at least 10 total that are good for pvp in one way or another. It'd be a good idea to have some others for bashing specifically.
Souldrinker - A weapon that has been imbued with the souldrinker effect will steal a portion of the damage it does and channel it into the wielder. Essentially lifesteal. Now, this could be done a variety of ways. A flat %, which would make it easy to balance between one hand and two hands, but may also need a cap so people with lots of crits don't become immune to everything. You could have it heal a % of your total health each time you crit, but would need to be only proccable every so often to keep BM/BC from having an advantage. Mobs only on the critting version, obviously, but even the other is unlikely to make it to PVP because damage killing is unlikely and may want it to be mobs only for balance anyways.
Glimmering - Increase power gained from linking astral nodes. BM/BC can get 1 power (half-link) for each rune and the heftier weapons could get a whole extra link of power to account for the difference in slotting flexibility.
Crushing - Can be used to smash walls, for a balance.
PrettyLights - Allows the wielder to change the colour of attacks made using the weapon. Fluffy? Yes. I would still love it.
Seeking - Increase crit %.
Blurry - Small % chance to bypass parry. On the fence about this one. You aren't going to win a fight just attacking their parry spot if you get through 1/20 times, but if it makes you think you got them to move their parry and they didn't it could be more of a hindrance than a help. Maybe if there is an extra line so you know that's what happened.
I love the idea that was brought up for ignoring shielding, but this should probably be against mobs only.